You First

by Stephanie Fournet

  And sleep. He’d need to sleep again very soon.

  His shoulders drooped at the thought of sleeping. It felt like a lead apron had settled over him — just like at the dentist’s.

  “You’re tired,” Meredith said softly. “You need to rest.”

  Gray nodded and let his head sink back against the pillow.

  “I’m going to Br—” Meredith stopped. Her eyes focused somewhere on the floor as she gave a slow, self-admonishing shake of her head. “My best friend’s name is Brooke. You’ve met her once. I’m going to stay with her tonight. I’ll go by your place tomorrow and get the rest of my stuff.”

  The rest of her stuff?

  “That way, you can be surrounded by people you know when you go home,” she said, nodding decisively.

  Her stuff. Home. “Do we live together?” he wrote. The words were barely legible. Gray could not imagine living with someone unless…

  Did he love her? Did she love him?

  His heart started thumping double-time at the thought. Exhilaration toyed with him. Hope tempted him. Gray wanted it to be true. But was it? And how could he find out? He couldn’t exactly ask her: Do I love you? or worse, Do you love me?

  Looking at her and the way she suffered, it was clear they meant something to each other, and that was enough for Gray to want to pledge his loyalty to her, but he had no way of knowing the depth of what they felt. Only more time with her would reveal that.

  Meredith was shaking her head. “No, no. I’m just staying with you until my apartment is ready. It’s…” Her gaze flicked away from his. “…it’s complicated.”

  “Stay.”

  The lone word on the marker board made her hesitate, he could tell. He didn’t know when he’d be released, but if she was in his house, that meant more opportunity to figure this out.

  She stared at the word for too long. “I can’t. Not now. I should…I should go.” She glanced between him and the floor, looking half-lost. She took a step toward him, reached out her hand, and let it drop.

  She was debating about whether or not to touch him, Gray realized. He wanted to reach for her, he wanted to point to the word again, but the morphine-soaked fatigue weighed down his arms.

  When will I see you again? The words wanted to be set free, but his eyes were already closing. Gray fought to keep them open. She looked so sad. He couldn’t let her leave looking so sad…

  GRAY AWOKE IN a different room. Not home, but a room with a window. A private room. He was starving. The light outside the window was an uncertain violet. Was it the day’s end or the first light of dawn?

  He looked around. Contorted and cramped, Bax slept in an armchair beside him. Gray blinked awake, now remembering snatches from the night before: the jarring blood pressure checks, waking to a dry mouth and the annoyance of fluorescent lights, the slight vertigo as his bed was wheeled down a corridor. He was out of ICU, and the light outside now slanting toward lavender was dawn, not dusk.

  His stomach gave an impatient growl. When had he last eaten? He raised the head of the bed, and the whirring noise woke Baxter.

  “Finally,” his brother muttered, stretching in the chair before standing up. He dug his phone out of his pocket, checked the time, and raised a brow. “You’ve been sleeping almost thirteen hours.”

  Gray scanned the room for the marker board and found no sign of it.

  “You need to try talking,” Bax said, reading his mind.

  Gray shook his head and mimed scribbling into the palm of his hand. When he spoke, he sounded like a Wookiee. He wasn’t going to put himself through that humiliation until he was working with a speech therapist who was trained to help him.

  Bax shook his head, mock disappointment flattening his mouth. “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean. What are you trying to say?”

  Gray scowled at his brother. Really? I just had brain surgery, and you’re playing with me?

  Shrugging like a clown, Bax turned his hands up. “I just wish I could understand you.”

  Gray slapped the mattress with an open palm. This was just like his brother, pushing him into something he didn’t want. And there was nothing within reach he could throw at him. Where were his parents? His mother wouldn’t stand for it. He could call—

  “Vuh,” he cursed. “Vuh yuh.”

  Bax threw his head back and laughed. “Brilliant. I understood you perfectly.”

  “Foh.” Gray growled.

  “What?” Bax frowned in earnest this time.

  Gray held up his hand by his ear, pinky and thumb outstretched. “Foh, atho.”

  Bax’s chin tucked back. “Did you just call me an asshole?”

  He glared at his brother in a way that could not be misinterpreted. Bax crossed the small room to a duffle bag that sat on a wood-framed chair. He unzipped the bag, reached in, and pulled out Gray’s phone.

  “Last night, after she left, Meredith went back to your place, packed the bag for you, and brought you the phone.” Bax handed it to him, and watched him for a moment. “Do you remember her?”

  Gray yanked the device from his brother’s grip.

  Gray: I remember meeting her yesterday.

  Bax’s phone chimed. He looked down and read the text. His look of disappointment was real this time.

  “Sorry, Gray,” he muttered. “She was still pretty broken up when she brought all that stuff. I guess I was hoping you’d wake up and…well, never mind.”

  Gray didn’t waste any time.

  Gray: How long have we been dating?

  At this message, Bax’s brow shot up. “That’s a great question. I’m not sure. I hired her to help you a few weeks ago.”

  Gray frowned.

  Gray: A few weeks?

  Bax’s low chuckle echoed through the room. “Yeah, you moved pretty fast. I hired her. The next thing I knew, you’d had a seizure, Cates freaked out, and you were kissing her in front of the whole family.”

  “Whaa?” It was too much to take in. Bax had hired her to help him? He’d kissed her in front of his family? Gray Blakewood had never done anything like that in his life. It sounded crazy. And out of character.

  And pretty damn awesome.

  Gray: YOU hired her? Why?

  Bax gave him an eye roll. “Because you wouldn’t take your seizure medicine. You couldn’t drive yourself without risking vehicular homicide. I was convinced you’d have a seizure, tumble down the stairs, and without anyone to feed them, Vulcan and Juno would be forced to live off your remains.”

  Gray: Dramatic much?

  “Anyway, she took the job, and she started cooking for you,” Bax said, his mouth turning up in a smile. “You said you liked that.”

  A rush of warmth spread down his chest. Gray was no cook. He either ate out or relied on convenience food. Frozen meals. Sandwiches. Cereal. And when he ate out, he ate well. So his diet consisted of two extremes, the very best and the very worst. One was high-living, the other surviving. Nothing in the middle. The thought of Meredith cooking for him made him feel grounded, centered. A balancing of the teeter-totter life he lived. And even though he could remember none of it, Gray felt grateful.

  Gray: What else do you know about her?

  Bax read the message and blew out a sigh. “She’s young.” He eyed Gray with concern. “And she has a kid. A son.”

  Gray couldn’t hide his shock.

  Bax nodded. “Yeah, and there was some weird business with her ex a few days ago, Mom said.” Bax watched him, seeming to search his face for any flicker of recognition. “You called the police, and you got André Washington involved.”

  Bax tried to hide it, Gray could see, but there was a hint of skepticism in his brother’s eyes. So this was what Meredith had meant when she’d said her life was crazy. And this must have been how he’d helped her.

  If she’d had trouble with her ex, and he’d called in André, she must have been in danger, Gray realized. Without warning, the urge to protect overtook him. Whatever he’d done, Gray hoped it had bee
n enough to keep her safe.

  “And, um…” Bax dragged a hand over his mouth and down his chin, as if weighing his words took all his concentration. “…Mom said… you put her into your will?”

  He turned the statement into a question, tinged with disbelief.

  Gray had put her into his will? If this was true, it told him everything he needed to know. His eyes flicked to his phone and he searched his messages for her name. And there it was, a history of correspondence between them. Gray read the last few — from two days before.

  Gray: Where are you?

  Meredith: Leaving school. That test butchered me.

  Gray: Come home to me. I’ll put you back together.

  Meredith: :) You’re really good at that.

  His face flamed as he spied on their intimacy before he let the reality sink in. This is ours. This is mine. It was like finding a winning lottery ticket in his back pocket.

  “What are you grinning at?” Bax asked, and Gray looked up to find him frowning. “Do you remember any of this?”

  Gray shook his head. It was rapidly becoming clear to him that if he never remembered, it might not matter all that much, as long as he knew what she meant to him. And he was becoming more and more certain of that every minute.

  “Well… don’t you think it’s… a little strange? I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Bax said, shifting his weight and holding up his hands. “Meredith is a sweetheart, and she’s been amazing through all of this… but it’s so unlike you.”

  This he couldn’t deny. It wasn’t like him to fall like a stone for someone in a few weeks. To open his home and his heart to a girl who had more than her fair share of problems. It wasn’t like him at all.

  It was better.

  Gray: Does she make me happy?

  He knew the answer before Bax had even read the question. The evidence was everywhere. It had been in the look on their faces when they realized he didn’t remember her. It had been in the way he felt when she’d leaned in to hug him the day before — when he only knew her as a stranger. It was in the trail of truth he was just picking out — in his efforts to protect her and provide for her.

  Bax read the message, and his shoulders hitched with silent laughter. He looked back up at Gray, his frown gone. “Happier than I’ve seen you in a long time. Maybe happier than I’ve ever seen you.”

  Gray nodded, unsurprised but already tasting the joy he’d known. He tapped the text conversation he and Meredith shared.

  Gray: Good morning, Meredith.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  MEREDITH AWOKE ON the air mattress between Brooke and Penny’s twin beds. Oscar lay snuggled beside her. She’d cried herself to sleep the night before, but only after settling Oscar down an hour past his bedtime.

  He’d been an emotional wreck, crying and rejecting all of his favorites. Books, songs, the rocking chair. Meredith wasn’t sure if it was because of all of the moving around or if he could sense that she was starting to unravel. Maybe both.

  At least it was Sunday. Catching up on homework wasn’t the best way to soothe a broken heart, but she didn’t have to get out of her pajamas and face the world. The week would start, and before she knew it, she and Brooke would be moving into their own place, and she could concentrate on building a new life for herself.

  After she found another job.

  Meredith shut her eyes as the thought resurfaced, towing all the pain attached to it. Aside from the fact that she’d fallen in love with him, working for Gray had made her happy. And it had nothing to do with the reality that it was the best paying job she’d ever had — by far. Helping him had made her feel good. She made a difference for him — in his home and with his work. It was fun, and it was fulfilling. And it was all of those things outside of what she felt for him.

  Meredith had faith she’d find another job, maybe even one she liked as much as working for Gray, but she didn’t kid herself about getting over him. That wouldn’t happen. And she didn’t want it to. One of them had to remember what they’d shared.

  It wasn’t his fault he’d forgotten her, she knew, so she didn’t blame him or even his doctors. But the truth of it burned with an all-too-familiar shame.

  Meredith Ryan was beginning to believe there was something about her that made her inherently forgettable. Her parents had turned her out of their house without a backward glance. When she wouldn’t get an abortion, Jamie had dropped her for Veronica Sanger. And now Gray, whom she’d given the whole of her heart, had no memory of her at all. Maybe the universe felt that this was no worse than she deserved.

  And while it seemed like Gray wanted to get to know her now, she couldn’t help but feel that there were too many reasons he shouldn’t be with her. He didn’t have to choose her again, and, given the state of things, Meredith couldn’t bet that he would.

  Maybe that was a lack of faith on her part, but she needed him to make his own decisions. He didn’t remember her, so she couldn’t cling to the edge of his hospital bed, hoping against hope that he’d choose her again. Considering all their differences — he was older, successful, worldly, educated, and free — it was hard to believe he’d ever chosen someone like her in the first place, and that made it hard to imagine he’d do it again. She was just starting school, not even twenty years old — with a child, and about as worldly as Kimmy Schmid, thanks to her parents.

  Before his surgery, Meredith had let herself believe that Gray was her destiny. But now that he didn’t know her, it felt as though the last few weeks may as well have existed only in her daydreams. She knew their time had been real, but what if it was just a fluke? In the weeks she’d been with him, she’d been the only woman to enter his world, after all. Meredith had thanked God almost every moment that he’d come through the surgery and he would, with or without memories of her, be okay. But now that he was better, he wouldn’t be stuck at home, dependent on the help of other people for transportation or company. Gray Blakewood could have any woman on the planet.

  She’d be a fool to think he’d pick her again.

  And yet, when she closed her eyes and thought about the man she loved, the one who’d told her only days before that, no matter what happened, he belonged to her, the longing she felt was like the blade of a sabre, piercing her slow and deep and forever.

  She missed that man. The one who kept her talking on the phone while she walked alone. The one who teased her about singing in his kitchen. The one who drew her a bath and soaped each of her toes after a hard day. She missed him as if she could die of it.

  And that was too much to lay on someone who looked at her like a stranger. She couldn’t expect that he’d beat a path back to that, so she had retreated. And in order not to drive herself crazy with longing, she had to make herself busy.

  Now.

  Meredith pushed herself up from the air mattress. A routine. She and Oscar needed to stick to some sort of routine. By the time she and Brooke moved into the apartment, Oscar would have slept in four different beds inside of two weeks. The least she could do would be to keep as many things the same as she could, which meant they needed to get dressed, get his milk, and go for a walk.

  It was early, and Meredith didn’t want to wake Brooke and Penny, so, as quietly as she could, she pulled on yesterday’s jeans and — she couldn’t help it — Gray’s black sweater. The scent of wood smoke was torture, but there was also comfort in the reminder. The Gray of the past had ordered her to get dressed before paramedics could come in and find her in a bra. The Gray of the past loved her. The sweater was proof. And wearing it reminded her of what it felt like to have his love.

  So, with the sweater surrounding her, she scooped up Oscar just as he was beginning to stir, and she carried him to the Cormier’s downstairs bathroom where she changed his diaper, dressed him, and bundled him in his jacket.

  In the stroller with his sippy cup in hand, Oscar didn’t seem to mind at all that they strolled the avenues of Holden Heights instead of the familiar Saint Streets. But when
they passed a yard where a German Shepherd barked gamely at them, the questions started.

  “Where Juno and Wuwkin?” he asked, waving to the German Shepherd who looked like he wanted to play with them instead of scare them away.

  The question shouldn’t have surprised her, but she hadn’t been expecting it, so it slammed hard into her heart.

  “They’re at their house,” she said, forcing her voice to come out even.

  “Wiff Gway?” Oscar voice lifted with his question, and the eagerness it carried slammed even harder.

  She wasn’t about try to explain where Gray was, so she told a white lie. “Yes, with Gray,” she said, finding it possible — even soothing — to say his name aloud. Meredith ducked her chin into the neck of the sweater and inhaled Gray’s scent.

  “Can we go dere?”

  This time, her voice wasn’t so steady. “Um… not today, baby.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Meredith swallowed hard. “We’ll see.”

  Oscar was quiet for a minute, and then he said, almost to himself, “I wanna see da bid dogs.”

  “I want to see Gray,” she admitted, under her breath.

  Her phone pinged in her coat pocket. She pushed the stroller one-handed and reached for it. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. Had Brooke woken to find them gone? Again, Meredith’s best friend had swooped in to hold her world together after she’d left the hospital. By now, Meredith probably owed her a kidney. Or a Lexus. Or—

  Her eyes fell on the screen, and her lungs froze.

  Gray: Good morning, Meredith.

  Seeing his text instantly conjured him. She heard his voice in the words — as though he were right there with her.